[dredmorbius]

For many physical efforts, overpacing and poor form can both rob you of results. In particular, exceeding your aerobic threshold for any period of time will require recovery time --- you can pull this off at the end of a ride or in a critical effort (breakaway, hill ascent) where you'll get a chance to recover afterwards, but full on and you're simply sabotaging yourself. Perceived effort is a very poor guide. In some activities there's a very real risk of acute or chronic-overuse injury as well.

John Cleese talks of a similar concept in creative activity, learned from a screenwriter who'd worked with Alfred Hitchcock:

When we came up against a block and our discussions became very heated and intense, Hitchcock would suddenly stop and tell a story that had nothing to do with the work at hand.

At first, I was almost outraged, and then I discovered that he did this intentionally. He mistrusted working under pressure. He would say, “We're pressing, we're pressing, we're working too hard. Relax, it will come.” And, says the writer, of course it finally always did.

https://www.conversationagent.com/2012/04/lesson-in-creativi...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=bC-gBeQYHls&t=3m25s

[hellofunk]

Interesting that Steve Jobs had pretty much the opposite approach to group collaboration and pressure, yet got good results from them as well. At the expense of an often very miserable working environment.

[dredmorbius]

Philosophies do differ widely.

There's some suggestion that young and old Jobs had markedly distinct management styles.

That's ... also discussed in a talk somewhere that I've heard recently, though I don't recall by whom at the moment.

More generally, there's been subsstantial research of highly innovative companiess, most especially the research labs at DuPont (Hounshell, https://www.worldcat.org/title/science-and-corporate-strateg...), AT&T (Gertner https://www.worldcat.org/title/idea-factory-bell-labs-and-th...), the Manhattan project (various), and more. The lighter touch seems generally preferred.

[jacobr1]

I wonder if the time-scale is relevant. Are we talking about different things when "keeping the pressure on" for project that weeks or months in duration and "maintaining intensity" for a specific effort measure in hours? Could you deescalate the latter while maintaining the former? How does that work with stress and cortisol and other factors?

[valuearb]

I’m not sure what that Jobs style was the opposite. He was the industries leading example of taking your time to get it right. Like when he canceled the iPad just prior to the launch decision, and told the team to take a few years to try to make it into a phone instead.

[hellofunk]

The extraordinary pressure he put people under on a daily basis, especially as deadlines approached, his biographies are full of reports of working long weekends, sleeping in the office, having him push push push push to the breaking point.

[redelbee]

Thank you for the Hitchcock anecdote about creativity under pressure, that idea is new to me.

When it comes to the physical realm, perceived effort (or “rating of perceived exertion”) was shown to be as effective as heart rate for pacing interval training in this study and others it references:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4296211/

From my layman’s perspective it makes sense that perceived effort would be a great guide to overexertion as those perceptions seem to be driven by the same system that prevents us from overreaching in general. Tim Noakes calls it the “central governor” that keeps us from doing harm to ourselves:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_governor

Perhaps the best way to set yourself up for success is to decide on an optimal threshold and try to stay within its bounds, no matter the endeavor. It seemed to work for Hitchcock’s creativity and we know it works in the physical realm as well.

Then you can stress the system to see if it’s beneficial or not. Maybe we should all be doing “creative interval training” to increase our capacity for creation, just like we would to increase our cycling capacity!

[dredmorbius]

Perceived effort, and ability to self-monitor it, varies greatly. An experienced athlete may be much better at this, though often with some form of outside assistance: pace clocks, splits, speed measurements, heartrate monitor, etc.

The inexperienced or untrained athlete may mistake effort for result, often sacrificing form (which may be none too perfected to begin with) in the effort. This especially is where the perceived effort vs. actual attained performance diffrence manifests.

For activities such as swimming, formal coaching involves an extraordinary level of focus and time on stroke technique. The biomechanics of moving through a dense fluid make proper execution of stroke, recovery, turns, starts, and breathing critical to efficient and effective performance. I've had the experience of sharing a pool with swimmers who were faster through the water but worse on turns --- I'd recover the half-bodylength they gained on me each lap with tighter turns and a more efficient kick and glide off the wall. Coach noticed too.

Even more ... pedestrian ... activities such as running, or mechanically-integrated activities such as cycling and rowing have a significant element of technique involved, though in my estimation probably less so than swimming. The remarkable deviation in styles of elite and novice or poorly trained athletes is starkly evident to even casual observers.

In high-skill sports, from ballet to tennis to golf, the requirements for form over raw strength are even greater.

And I'd argue in each case that a tremendous effort exerted with poor form will virtually always result in a lower achievement --- slower speed, longer oveerall time, shorter distances or hights jumped, less weight moved, etc. All the more so at the limits of performance or ability.

[anibalin]

What a fantastic anecdote. Thanks for sharing.